Health information and statistics

Abstract

The primary focus of epidemiology is the distribution of disease in the population and the factors that affect this. The measurement of disease frequency and the determination of its complex relationship with demographic characteristics is therefore a central activity. Good information concerning the health status of communities and the trends prevailing over time has always been central to epidemiology, and the key to public health. Indeed the importance of health statistics forms part of nursing’s legacy (Cohen, 1984), for it was Nightingale who, working with the statistician William Farr, was one of the first to recognise the potential of medical statistics as a systematic way of learning from experience.